Media devices are in common use among a broad base of users. Radio and television have provided entertainment for generations of users. Portable transistor radios of the 1960s began a trend to smaller and more robust personal media devices including very small devices storing all digital content on both rotating and non-rotating media. Streaming media is available over both wireless and wired networks and may be displayed on cellular telephones and other portable media devices.
Media devices may send and receive content over a variety of data networks including cell-based and isochronous networks. For example, the IEEE 802 standard family describes various local and wide-area networks (LAN and WAN, respectively) that carry variable-sized packets and may be used to transfer media content between media devices. Media devices communicating over an 802-type network, or any other type of network, are able to share information and transfer data files. Much of the data communicated between portable media devices consists of copyright protected works. For example, digital media devices may communicate virtually perfect digital copies of protected music, video, and photo files between devices unless a type of digital rights management (DRM) technique is employed. DRM techniques involve limiting the use of copyright protected works to allow content owners to determine and control who and how users can view, use, and share digital media objects. For example, DRM rules limit digital content use by destroying or degrading the object when a DRM rule is violated.
Further, portable media devices or other computing devices may share or transfer DRM-protected content. Once a protected object is transferred, DRM techniques may become difficult for the content owners to manage effectively. As devices transfer and receive many objects through the network, managing protected objects that, due to the DRM rules, become inactive, expired, or disabled may result unwanted resource consumption at the receiving device. In addition, a receiving device may become cluttered and unmanageable if a high number of received, but unusable objects are stored on the device as part of the device's media library. Unless a system manages shared or transferred objects effectively, the user experience may become significantly degraded.